I believe that
musical tastes are made, not born, and the key to revitalizing the classical
music scene is to hook people from childhood.
Kids introduced at an early age will grow up humming classical tunes, just as
they learn to speak the languages they hear most. Why can’t they be “bilingual”
in classical and popular music, as long as classical is heard as often in daily
life as other kinds of music?

There is nothing
inherently unlikable about classical music. All popular music has a classical
counterpart somewhere, similar in style or mood. Yet, the image of classical
music is rarefied, highbrow, not for regular guys. In contrast to popular
concerts, the classical concert scene is considered formal, expensive, somewhat
stodgy, with no audience participation. Classical music must come out of its
special category and be integrated into daily life and popular culture.
Normalized, legitimated, marketed to and for all people.

A surefire way to
introduce classical music to young people would be through videogames. It would
be simple to use actual melodies – even in game-format arrangements – from the
classical literature; this would make them familiar to kids from early on, and
they would be associated with pleasant memories when the original pieces were
played on the radio.

Another idea to
capture teens’ interest would be to capitalize on the popularity of Japanese
anime movies. An anime could be made along the lines of the movie Fantasia,
incorporating classical music with cutting-edge graphics and a popular
storyline. The soundtrack could be marketed as “Music from the film…” and kids
would get a chance to enjoy classical music without having to think of it as
such.

Here’s an experiment. Host a classical concert aimed
at teens, but marketed by the same promoters that do pop concerts. Start by
convening a focus group to get teens’ own ideas of how to sell classical to
their peers. Have ticket giveaways on the local popular radio stations, or make
ticket prices reasonable. Encourage some kind of audience participation (but
not the “talk down to them” kind that occurs at educational concerts). Sell
popcorn. Show anime. Give away door prizes. Give them a scorecard, and have
them mark down things they heard and what piece/movement they heard them in
(e.g. list pieces and movements down the left side, musical “events” across the
top – e.g. oboe solo, harp plays, funeral march, cuckoo call, Lone Ranger
theme, etc.), then give prizes (that teens actually want, not free classical
CDs). Invite them to come dressed casually and comfortably. Invite young,
glamorous, cool performers . Promote the concert on popular radio stations. The
point is to hook them, to change the image of classical concerts, to get them
to actually listen seriously. Once they do, I’ll bet that many discover they
actually like it – at least some aspect of it. Surely there is SOME piece of
classical music that speaks to each individual – they just have to get over
their fear of foreignness and “Give Piece a Chance”.